[Resto] Life Bloom Uptime Unimportant

My lifebloom up time has always been pretty sub par around 70-80%, I always tend to get overwhelmed and prioritize rejuving someone over keeping the stack up. But despite this I managed quite a few top 5 25-HM parses in ToT and always wondered how I did that with such bad LB use. I always considered it bad play and that I could of potentially done more heals if I wasn't letting my stack drop 5-6+ times a fight.

But after taking a look at some of the number 1 resto druid parses on a lot of fights peoples LB up time is pretty atrocious.

On the council fight his up time is only 20% ! I'm sure many of the other number 1 ranks have low up times as well.

This leads me to believe resto druid's focus across the board on the importance of LB may be somewhat misplaced and that it is indeed better to pump out as many rejuvs as possible and not stress too much if you let your stack drop.

Any thoughts? Are these guys just being lazy and could have potentially got even higher parses with 95%+ LB up time? They are the Number 1 ranks from the top raiding guilds so you would expect there play to be near perfect.

Part of the reason we want to keep Lifeblooms rolling on the tank is because it allows us to proc the free regrowth, which is a huge mana saver while being a very nice heal. Because almost every healer isn't worrying about mana at this point in the tier, those procs become a little less useful, so it doesn't actually impact our healing as much as it used to.

Part of the reason we want to keep Lifeblooms rolling on the tank is because it allows us to proc the free regrowth, which is a huge mana saver while being a very nice heal. Because almost every healer isn't worrying about mana at this point in the tier, those procs become a little less useful, so it doesn't actually impact our healing as much as it used to.

I realize this, I still thought 100% LB uptime was a healing increase over chucking out more rejuvs onto the raid though.

The key difference between 10 man and 25 man is that, in 10 man, you have two to three healers for every two tanks. In 25 man, on the other hand, you have five to seven healers, but you still only have two tanks. This means that LB is much less of a contributor to keeping tanks alive and well in 25 man. While its uptime is still pretty important, it should not be a priority to refresh it if there are others in the raid who require heals more than the tanks do--especially when the raid is taking heavy damage. In almost all cases, the tanks will already be receiving enough heals from AoE smart heals, hots, and absorbs in addition to external cds to not have to worry about dropping low. Once the raid is stabilized though, you should make it a priority to get LB back up.

Keep LB is important, but when I have to decide between LB uptime or something that I decide that is more important like SM someone that is dieing LB will fall and fuck logs. We are a GCD capped class and you will have time during progression fights meanly that you will have to let LB fall for the sake of something more important.

My Harmony and LB uptimes are most likely to be lower than expected in progression for HoTW dps too. On Council and Twins, for example, I HoTW 2 times during the fight. 10 man btw.

Keep LB is important, but when I have to decide between LB uptime or something that I decide that is more important like SM someone that is dieing LB will fall and fuck logs. We are a GCD capped class and you will have time during progression fights meanly that you will have to let LB fall for the sake of something more important.

My Harmony and LB uptimes are most likely to be lower than expected in progression for HoTW dps too. On Council and Twins, for example, I HoTW 2 times during the fight. 10 man btw.

I can appreciate that saving someone is > than refreshing LB, this will always be the case. But what im more interested in is whether refreshing LB is even worth it from a purely HPS stand point. Those logs are from players who have been farming those bosses for months so they are in no way progressing, I doubt any of there raid ever really gets to close to dying they know the fight so well. I just want to ascertain if it is indeed a HPS increase not to refresh (maybe not even use) LB. This is assuming that the tanks is never ever really in danger of dying, not that LB will do I whole lot to save him anyway.

Healing is not DPS. If you feel that in some point, LB in the tank is not important, you can switch to other target or let it fall, you need to make this judgment. It really depends on you raid. Every group is different. In my raid, there is a melee that take so much damage in the first phase in Iron Qon that I let my LB on him. Thats why I like healing 10 mans. Your decisions make people die or live, many times, you have just one more healer with you, your position, spell selection, mana management, is much more important, a bad decision, a wrong CD use, can wipe the raid.

I read this somewhere, don't know who wrote this, but I agree. DPS is a science, healing is an art. If you feel that your LB uptime can be better, try to improve it. If you feel that its not hurting your raid, and you actually doing more HPS and healing better with it falling sometimes, keep going.

And yeah, there is some situations that spamming reju and let LB fall will give you more HPS, cause LB will be most overheal and the reju will not.

If you think healing is a numbers race you may as well quit and play DPS while you still can. Healing parses are indicative of a few things: Your other healers suck, aren't healing, or you are underhealing content (or a combination thereof). Just because you are number 1 doesn't mean you are benefiting your other healers the most. Sure you can parse and say you are amazing, but you are creating issues for your other healers because you are playing selfishly to achieve said goals. Lifebloom may not be a LOLMETERS gain, but it's still beneficial to spend that global keeping LB active on your tank. Lifebloom healing can help out quite a bit on tank stability.

Healer logs can be useful to determine how to play better, but simply looking at the number 1 parse and going "LOL THAT'S HOW I MUST PLAY" is a wrong mentality. If you take 5 seconds to look further at Owld's Twin Consorts log, you'll notice they are doing split heroic raids (as we are) and have 3 resto shaman in the raid. I'd imagine it could be very easy to parse if you have 3 tides and ask your other healers nicely to let you parse [as well as using alt healers who may be undergeared and/or not as familiar with that class] (We did this a few times in Dragon Soul, that's how Nodoz had a number 1 Ultraxion parse for ages). Don't take this as me saying Owld is bad, just that he parsed for reasons unrelated to player skill.

Yes, you should be keeping lifebloom up 100% of the time. It does more healing per cast (even without blooming) than a rejuvenation will. It is even worth it to throw on low HP raid members during progression if the tank damage is low for a given fight. Healing isn't about topping meters but being able to optimize throughput is a very nice bonus for progression. TBH outside of top 10 progression it won't matter too much if you let LB fall off here or there; it isn't going to be what holds your raid back.

If you think healing is a numbers race you may as well quit and play DPS while you still can. Healing parses are indicative of a few things: Your other healers suck, aren't healing, or you are underhealing content (or a combination thereof). Just because you are number 1 doesn't mean you are benefiting your other healers the most. Sure you can parse and say you are amazing, but you are creating issues for your other healers because you are playing selfishly to achieve said goals. Lifebloom may not be a LOLMETERS gain, but it's still beneficial to spend that global keeping LB active on your tank. Lifebloom healing can help out quite a bit on tank stability.

Healer logs can be useful to determine how to play better, but simply looking at the number 1 parse and going "LOL THAT'S HOW I MUST PLAY" is a wrong mentality. If you take 5 seconds to look further at Owld's Twin Consorts log, you'll notice they are doing split heroic raids (as we are) and have 3 resto shaman in the raid. I'd imagine it could be very easy to parse if you have 3 tides and ask your other healers nicely to let you parse [as well as using alt healers who may be undergeared and/or not as familiar with that class] (We did this a few times in Dragon Soul, that's how Nodoz had a number 1 Ultraxion parse for ages). Don't take this as me saying Owld is bad, just that he parsed for reasons unrelated to player skill.

I agree with everything your saying and was never trying to state differently.

Maybe by just using rank 1's I gave the wrong impression, what i was trying to say is that from what I can see a lot of good resto druids are favoring pushing out more rejuvs instead of refreshing LB. Something I had always considered to be a fault in my own healing. I was simply asking for peoples thoughts on this sort of play style. And Im sure in most of those logs alot the players didn't think im going to try parse and so to do so change my healing completely. But they are just healing the fight as they natural would sacrificing LB up times for extra rejuvs when there is high raid wide damage.

If they are doing it just to pad than that's an answer to my question, but I do doubt they are.

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Originally Posted by vow1152

Yes, you should be keeping lifebloom up 100% of the time. It does more healing per cast (even without blooming) than a rejuvenation will. It is even worth it to throw on low HP raid members during progression if the tank damage is low for a given fight. Healing isn't about topping meters but being able to optimize throughput is a very nice bonus for progression. TBH outside of top 10 progression it won't matter too much if you let LB fall off here or there; it isn't going to be what holds your raid back.

Thankyou, this is pretty much the type of answer I was looking for as to which spell should be prioritized when there is high damage and indeed swap it to a dps if the tank is not in need of healing.

On another note why then do you think many good players up times are so bad? Or just lazyness during farm

But after taking a look at some of the number 1 resto druid parses on a lot of fights peoples LB up time is pretty atrocious.

Thats where you went wrong (Bolded and Underlined). Most of the number 1 resto druid parses are not progression fights. The Twins fight in the first log you posted was 3 months after Method had already downed that fight. Same with Treph's 25H Council fight, Owld's 25H Dark Animus, Møøncry's 25H Iron Qon, and Owld's 25H Primordius.

If you really think that top ranked guilds can get world/server firsts and take enough damage in those fights this late in content to warrant a #1 healing spot on WoL you are sadly mistaken. What you are most likely seeing in these logs are runs where they can be easily healed with 1-2 healers, but they are either carrying an alt/recruit, or they are 1-3 healing these fights either because they can, or because their other healers died early.

On a farm fight, you are not likely to see uptimes you would see on a progression fight because those uptimes are not nearly as important on a farm boss.

If you want to get a better idea of what you should be targeting for in terms of uptimes and whatnot, I would not recommend looking at the top 10-20 ranks. As the poster above me has stated, most of the top ranks are taken up by players who have content on farm and purposely cheese fights just so they can get their ranks. While some highly ranked players might have actually gotten their rank with proper play, it is often difficult to discern those players from those who cheese fights. A much better idea is to look at several players in the rank 50-150 range--especially if it is their first or second kill. If you look at enough of those parses, you should be able to find their patterns which can then help you find out what you might be doing right and what you can improve upon.

Lifebloom is still a very efficient spell as long as you don't constantly let if fall off. Since the tanks are always taking damage, it will always do some healing while generating clear casting procs which can be used for free regrowths. Even though regrowth isn't used nearly as much in 25 man as it is in 10 man, it can still be incredibly useful when you need to quickly heal somebody up. Every fight has enough down times where using three GCDs to put up LB (or one to refresh) won't be detrimental to your ability to keep the raid alive. As I have said earlier, due to the ratio of healers to tanks in 25 man, it isn't as important to keep it up if you need to spam rejuv on others in the raid during sufficiently high damage phases. However, you should still try to refresh it before it expires if you think losing that GCD won't kill the raid. It is worth noting that you only need one stack of LB to get the full benefit of clear casting procs.

Thats where you went wrong (Bolded and Underlined). Most of the number 1 resto druid parses are not progression fights. The Twins fight in the first log you posted was 3 months after Method had already downed that fight. Same with Treph's 25H Council fight, Owld's 25H Dark Animus, Møøncry's 25H Iron Qon, and Owld's 25H Primordius.

If you really think that top ranked guilds can get world/server firsts and take enough damage in those fights this late in content to warrant a #1 healing spot on WoL you are sadly mistaken. What you are most likely seeing in these logs are runs where they can be easily healed with 1-2 healers, but they are either carrying an alt/recruit, or they are 1-3 healing these fights either because they can, or because their other healers died early.

On a farm fight, you are not likely to see uptimes you would see on a progression fight because those uptimes are not nearly as important on a farm boss.

Yeah that was a miss step people thought I meant that Rank 1 healing = the best way to heal and healing parses are super important, when I was just trying to get a view of how some top players are healing.

Originally Posted by Whydrood

On a farm fight, you are not likely to see uptimes you would see on a progression fight because those uptimes are not nearly as important on a farm boss.

I personally try to keep lifebloom up on a tank as much as possible. 1 because it gives you cc procs and it's nice to have a free regrowth sometimes, and sometimes the bloom really helps if you let it fall off.

I have noticed that many resto druids don't tend to keep it up, but it's what I do because I like the cc procs.

Remember it's zero to 1 GCD to keep LB up but three to reapply it. If you're reapplying it a lot, that's a lot of GCDs you could use for other stuff. If you're not really using it at all, it's a bit more complex.

Despite the immediate backlash to this thread I think there's value in its thought process. While refreshing a 3-stack of Lifebloom is better raw HPCT than Rejuv (and it's not even necessarily depending on how/if we're accounting for the GCD discrepancy) it's more complicated than that. A single or double stack of Lifebloom doesn't beat Rejuv, and a 3-stack of Lifebloom doesn't beat Rejuv by a lot (~273% SP vs 235.2% SP).

I think this probably means that if you ever let Lifebloom fall off it's only worth refreshing over a very long period of time (or when you have "free" GCDs or if you need the mana for free Regrowths):

There are a lot of flaws with that analysis, but I think it's enough to scare me off from basically ever re-stacking my Lifebloom with successive GCDs unless there's literally nothing else to heal -- and I'll be more willing to spend long periods of time without recasting/restacking a Lifebloom that falls off as long as the raid needs a steady stream of Rejuvs/Wild Growths/Swiftmends.

A 3 stack lifebloom does 12.7% more healing for the cost of 1 gcd than 1 rejuv with t15 4 set does. So yes you should focus on not letting lifebloom fall off and even go to the extent of swapping it to someone at low hp if they are going to be taking consistent damage.